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Summary: The Crazy Ladies of Tennessee
Review: This book has it all. You'll laugh and cry. And when you read that final page you'll hunger for more
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Summary: Go Crazy Over This Book!
Review: Six unforgettable women narrate this marvelous book in their own voices. It opens when Miss Gussie Hamilton accidentally shoots a man in her kitchen. The man is hastily buried in her vegetable garden--and he's still alive--but the act sets the tone for the next four decades. Miss Gussie has two daughters, different as night and day--one grows up to marry the local dimestore man and the other runs off to New Orleans with her no good boyfriend, who has gotten her pregnant. Then, years later, she goes to San Francisco, to be a hippie, abandoning her little daughter with Miss Gussie and her housekeeper, Queenie. The women in this book fall in love, quarrel with each other, snap beans on the screened porch, and one even jumps off of a bridge. This book is fabulous! I dare not tell anymore for fear of spoiling it for you. It's one heck of a read. Michael Lee West sure can spin a tale that haunts long after the book is finished
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Summary: All Gussied up with someplace to go
Review: Fans of Southern literature will love this book. And I'm not talking about the "Gone With The Wind" or "As I Lay Dying" variety of Southern lit; I'm talking about the "Fried Green Tomatoes," "Bark of the Dogwood," "Miss Julia Speaks her Mind" Southern lit. It truly is a crazy book, told from six different perspectives, each one unique and moving. This is by far one of the most unusual books you'll find on the market today. If you're looking for a crazy good time, look no further, folks: this is it.
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Summary: Crazy for this book
Review: This is the first West book I've read and now I'm in the market for her others.
I really enjoy stories that change narrators, especially when the stories overlap and you get a different perspective on the same situation.
This story was so creatively written, from the way it changed tones, locations, narrators, times. There was no way to become bored with the story.
This story took place from 1932 to 1972 from several locations and was told first-person by Gussie, her two daughters Clancy and Dorothy, her granddaughters and her maid.
Like other reviewers, I wanted to ring Dorothy's neck in one chapter and felt sorry for her in the next. Not too many mothers say of their daughters "she'd make me wish I'd caught a faster moving disease." Clancy also grated on my nerves because what trouble didn't find her, she brought on herself. But then when she told her side of the story, you could sympathize with her. I, like other reviewers, wish the author would have finished Dorothy's story.
There is everything in here from laugh-out-loud humor to some tear-jerking. And a deep-dark secret you know will eventually come to the surface, literally.
This read is well worth your time and once you get started, won't take much of it because it's a page turner.
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Summary: Crazy Ladies
Review: As touching and full as the Televised version of Forest Gump, Crazy Ladies is a 'must read'. I never wanted to put it down. The characters are multi-dimentional and well developed. The book is full of mishaps, little tragedies, and personal warmth- all the stuff that life is made of with a little extra spice.
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Summary: Crazy is only half the tale
Review: If you are a fan of "The Ya-Ya Sisterhood", you are going to like the crazy women of Michael Lee West's novel. Set in small town Tennessee from 1932 to 1972, West has her women tell their own story, starting with Gussie Hamilton, continuing with her daughters and grandaughters, and including her "Nigra" maid, Queenie. This wouldn't be a truly Southern woman's tale without that black voice.There is no "sisterhood" in the sense of Rebecca Well's books, but there is a bloodline of strong and "crazy" women who tell their own version of a story that encompasses all of them as they interact in one anothers' lives. And there is a quirky play of Mother Nature in the town's creek. The men of the story, husbands and sons and lovers, are almost overwhelmed by the women, and by the consequences of war. From WWII to Vietnam, the men are decimated in spirit and/or body or both. Sibling and class rivalry condition relationships, and racial prejudice sets an undercurrent of injustice into the subplots. Small town politics, hypocritical poses, family secrets, all play into the story. An insecure, less favored, jealous Dorothy lives up to her own expectations, unsuccessfully seeking attention and love her whole life through. Her younger, seemingly chosen sister, Clancy Jane has every reason to find success, but only finds heartbreak. Their strong center, Gussie, holds the whole group together, despite her own sorrow. And Queenie, the faithful maid, becomes the lifetime companion to Gussie and her progeny. Violet and Bitsy elongate the rivalry of their mothers, but maintain an uneasy truce of cousins. Reading this book with its chapters broken into books of each decade, is a bit like hearing gossip, as each character relates her own bias on the happenings of the Hamilton heirs. This is a fast and easy read, like looking over the shoulder of a several diarists who each perceive the story in a most personal way. And, there is an awful secret in this book, shades of "Fried Green Tomatoes", "The Bingo Queens of Paradise", "Paradise", and "Little Altars". But the reader is in on the secret from the start and the suspense comes from waiting to learn how its does or does not unravel at book's end. I have also purchased three other of Micheal Lee West's novels, and I will enjoy trying them out. I do recommend "Crazy Ladies" to the reader who likes a tale of strong women told in first person narrative.
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Summary: Southern Women
Review: As a Tennessean by choice and a southern lady by birth and upbringing, I found this book to be both familiar and foreign. The characters are compelling, though not completely likable. Gussie is strong in the way the women of a certain generation are. She fights for the survival of her family when she and her child are physically threatened and through her husband's mental illness, ill health, and subsequent death. Unfortunately, she cannot find it in herself to love her children equally. Dorothy is not very lovable, but very much in need of her mother's love and approval. She becomes an unlovable woman with a dark secret, repeating the mistakes her mother made by neglecting her daughter in favor of her son. Clancy Jane is a fragile flower, bent to breaking as an adult, who eventually becomes a strong, independent woman. A mother at a very young age, she is never equipped for the responsibilities of parenthood and her daughter becomes the care-taker in the relationship. Both Violet and Bitsy, Dorothy's daughter, are strong in ways their mothers could never imagine. It is there voices, along with that of Queenie (housekeeper, friend) that make this story intriguing. It is thought provoking and frightening and fun. It is not, however, the rowdy fun so often found in souther writing.
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